Transport Committee
Oral evidence: E-scooters: follow-up, HC 1077
Wednesday 8 February 2023
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 8 February 2023.
Members present: Iain Stewart (Chair); Mike Amesbury; Mr Ben Bradshaw; Jack Brereton; Ruth Cadbury; Paul Howell; Karl McCartney; Grahame Morris; Gavin Newlands; Greg Smith.
Questions 59–126
Witnesses
II: Councillor Daniel Barrington, Cabinet Member for Climate Emergency, Transport and Environment, Liverpool City Council; Brian Matthews, Head of Transport Innovation, Milton Keynes Council; and Matthew Pencharz, Head of Policy for UK, Ireland and the Netherlands, Voi.
Witnesses: Councillor Daniel Barrington, Brian Matthews and Matthew Pencharz.
Q59 Chair: Welcome to our second panel. For the purposes of our records, could you state your name and organisation, please?
Councillor Barrington: Councillor Daniel Barrington. I am a councillor at Liverpool City Council and cabinet member for climate emergency, transport and environment.
Matthew Pencharz: I am Matthew Pencharz, head of policy for Voi Technology, one of the operators of the e-scooter trials and e-bikes in England.
Brian Matthews: My name is Brian Matthews. I am head of transport and innovation at Milton Keynes Council.
Q60 Chair: Thank you all very much for coming before us today. Can I start by asking how the rental trials of e-scooters are carrying on in your local area? I have a slight knowledge of Milton Keynes, for obvious reasons. Councillor Barrington, how are the trials going in Liverpool?
Councillor Barrington: We launched our trial back in October 2020, initially with 100 vehicles just around the city centre area. We have now expanded that to cover around 80% of the city. We have over 2,200 vehicles on the street. There has been a very mixed reaction. People either love them or tend to hate them, but it has been one of the most successful trial schemes across the UK. It has been popular with users. There have been over 225,000 users, taking over 2.5 million rides.
There have been public concerns over the parking of scooters and poor rider behaviour, and we have worked with Voi to try to address some of those concerns. We have seen a lot of improvement over the past 18 months. Overall, it has been a positive experience for us. It is a mode of transport, alongside walking, cycling and public transport, that is helping to get people out of their cars and helping us on our journey to net zero.
Matthew Pencharz: As Councillor Barrington said, Voi is the operator in Liverpool. Although we operate e-scooters, we brought in some e-bikes in autumn last year. As he said, we have worked very closely with the council, and with all our local and combined authorities, to improve the scheme.
It has started its trials. Councillor Barrington mentioned parking, in particular, and we heard from Mr Wood earlier. That is a good example of how these trials have iterated and how we have improved them. For example, when we started in Liverpool it was what we call a free-float model, which is where the scooters could be parked in large part where the user wanted to leave them, except where it was specifically prohibited. We switched that in Liverpool to a mandatory parking zone. Some of the panellists earlier were talking specifically about how they would like the scooters parked in mandatory parking zones. This is exactly how we worked with Liverpool City Council during the trial to bring in the MPZ model.
What we have seen, both in Liverpool and with all our schemes, is that there is demand. It is successfully encouraging people, as a new option, out of single-occupancy cars. I am going to express, as you might expect, some of the frustration you heard on the panel previously and from some members of the Committee. Almost three years after the trials started, the demand for e-scooters is proven. Voi alone has had over 21 million rides—over 2 million of those in Liverpool alone. We have replaced over 8 million individual car journeys. The industry as a whole is over 30 million journeys, which we have seen across all the trials in England.
However, we in the industry do not have any certainty after May next year, when the trials were most recently extended to, so we have just over a year. Legislation would allow more cities and towns to use e-scooters as a sustainable mode of transport for their communities, providing a firm footing for the industry and the jobs and investments connected with it. It is worth saying that the industry has invested many millions, and we are employing many thousands of people, to deliver these sustainable schemes. We certainly hope that the Government will get on and legislate to give us certainty, and also more clarity for people who are, understandably, sometimes confused between our regulated trials and the more free-for-all and generally illegal private e-scooters.
Q61 Chair: I am aware that your trial in Coventry has come to an end. Would you say a little bit more about why that is the case?
Matthew Pencharz: It was a great trial for two years on the University of Warwick site. However, we have learned as part of the trials that in order to succeed they need to be at scale. In order to meet the policy benefits in particular, you need to operate in a wider area. That one remained quite small, and it was clear that we were not going to expand and scale that scheme wider than the University of Warwick campus. It was a fantastic learning experience for us, for the University of Warwick and for Coventry City Council, but it was unsustainable and financially unsustainable. Together with the council, we closed the scheme last month.
Q62 Chair: Let’s turn to the wonderful city of Milton Keynes.
Brian Matthews: The wonderful city of Milton Keynes launched its e-scooter trial back in August 2020. It was one of the first trials to launch. Uniquely, Milton Keynes operates with three operators. The reason was that we wanted to explore all the potential attributes that a scooter operation could have in the city. We also wanted to introduce an element of competition to see if competition would drive the quality up, rather than have a race to the bottom. Positive outcomes have been achieved with that.
I have lots of statistics about the usage in Milton Keynes that I can certainly share with the Committee. The headline is similar numbers to Liverpool, approaching 2 million trips and 30,000 users in the city. We have estimated a saving of 128 tonnes of carbon by the switch from public transport.
Very pleasingly for us, we have explored why people use e-scooters, what trips they undertake and the demographics of the user. Again, it is about looking to achieve some of the wider council objectives in terms of improving mobility for all our citizens. That is not to say we have not had the teething troubles and the issues that were described by others on the first panel—we certainly have. We work very hard with the wide-ranging stakeholder group to identify the issues and work with the operators and communities to bring in changes to the scheme as we progress with the trial.
As mentioned earlier, we have reduced speeds across the network. We have targeted speeds in sensitive areas to very low speeds. You will be aware, Chair, of Willen Lake, a very popular shared use, with speed limits of 5 mph. City centre speeds are down to 10 mph. We did not think that 15 mph an hour was appropriate, so the rest of Milton Keynes is 12 mph. We also looked at that as an impact on the users. As highlighted, the users pay per minute and clearly a lower speed increases the cost of usage. We are evaluating that against the other impacts from the type of interventions we have put in.
Q63 Chair: It would certainly be helpful to have that data for influencing our report. Can I ask all of you if there is still more to be learned from the trials, or are we at a point now where we have collected sufficient data to make a decision?
Councillor Barrington: I am keen to see the trials end and legislation come into place, particularly around private scooters. That is where I have a big concern because we know they are not regulated and the speed checks are not there. Some of them that people use on the roads look quite flimsy. For me, that is a key thing about getting the legislation in place. I was frustrated that we have had to extend the trial to May 2024. As Matthew says, we are keen to get more clarity about the future.
Q64 Chair: From Milton Keynes or Matthew, are there any more lessons still being evaluated?
Brian Matthews: We are very close to the point where we are not learning much more from the trials, but we have to remember the context the trials were placed in. We were coming out of lockdown in May. We wanted to reinvigorate high streets. We wanted to support more mobility when we were still giving advice about social distancing. For about 12 months after that—I cannot remember the specific dates—we were into and out of lockdowns and restrictions. The real-world testing post pandemic has only started relatively recently. We are now approaching a full year of what we could consider normal operation. We have got to that point, but it has perhaps not been too long because of the conditions we operated the trials in.
Q65 Chair: Thank you. Matthew, do you have anything to add?
Matthew Pencharz: I largely agree with Brian. The trials started very much as a pandemic response. It was a way to get, in particular, key workers to their place of work when public transport capacity was so greatly reduced. I cannot speak on behalf of competitor colleagues, but I assume that, similarly, they want to go very much from a pandemic response to addressing the cost of living crisis, and widening and meeting the climate goals of our cities.
We have seen usage normalise. We have seen the age of our users increase. You would expect that, with these sorts of technologies, the early adopters would tend to be quite young men. That is widening, certainly in age, as it becomes more normalised. Most of our journeys are being used for going from A to B; for example, commuting is 53% of our users. Most of the rest are perhaps going to study, to socialise or to the shops. That is a big increase from the report, which, it is worth reminding everybody, was published a year after it was completed. The statistics in that were that 36% were commuting. Our users tell us that it is 53%, so we are seeing it normalised.
We feel that there is not much more learning that the Government need in order to decide to legislate. We have proven the demand. We have proven that it is a safe and reliable service, and it is sustainable. Cities—I have two cities represented to my right and left—are keen on legislation; certainly the cities we work in are also keen to see it normalised and legalised.
Q66 Chair: One last question from me at the moment. There are reports that some cities around the world are thinking of abandoning e-scooters. Paris is one. Let us imagine that the Government have decided that the trials are over and we are going to legislate. Do you think that Liverpool and Milton Keynes would want to continue with e-scooter rentals?
Councillor Barrington: We are keen to continue with them. I particularly had concerns. I was not in a cabinet position when we introduced the trial. I came in in May 2021. As Matthew said, there was a free-flowing parking system that was causing a lot of problems across the city, with e-scooters left in inappropriate places. We worked closely with Voi to try to address those concerns. We have introduced designated parking bays and that has really helped. We want to move forward to on-street parking bays. At the moment e-scooters are still on the pavements, and that can cause issues with street clutter. That is something that we are keen to move on.
There were issues around poor driver behaviour as well, particularly in the first year. There were a lot of issues with people riding on pavements and double riding. It still happens, but not as much as it did. As people have got used to e-scooters it has become better, and people are using them more responsibly now.
Brian Matthews: I can say with a degree of confidence that Milton Keynes would want to continue with the trial. I base that on the fact that we took a public decision, a delegated decision, through the council in November last year, as to whether we wanted to extend the trial as offered by the DFT. The response from the cabinet in Milton Keynes was, yes, we do. There were very few, if any, words against us moving forward with the trial. I think that is because we have started to see it address the poor behaviour that was described to you before, and a very proactive response from the operators in Milton Keynes to work with us to ensure that we can eradicate the poor behaviour. I do not think it will ever be completely gone, but a lot of measures are now taking place to address it.
Chair: Karl and Paul have quick supplementary questions before we move on.
Q67 Karl McCartney: Councillor Barrington, is it just one operator that you have in Liverpool?
Councillor Barrington: We have just the one operator, yes.
Q68 Karl McCartney: In old parlance we talk about central business districts, but if you were to put a compass point in Liverpool, maybe at Lime Street station, or wherever, how big is the radius of the area where the scooters go, roughly?
Councillor Barrington: We cover about 80% of the whole city.
Q69 Karl McCartney: How far out do you go? Are you going out as far as Everton, or further?
Councillor Barrington: Yes, past Everton. I live in the Dovecot area, which is right on the edge. We are not quite at Dovecot, but the Knotty Ash area.
Karl McCartney: We all know Ken Dodd.
Councillor Barrington: We are not quite at Speke airport, but we are looking at expanding over there.
Q70 Karl McCartney: Roughly, how many students are there in Liverpool?
Councillor Barrington: A lot.
Q71 Karl McCartney: Can you write to us and give us a ballpark figure? Is it more or less than that small place that is nearby—Manchester? I am sure you have the data, but roughly how many of the journeys are being made by students in Liverpool? Is it lots when they are going in and out of university to their lectures or socialising in the evening, or are 53% of the journeys in Liverpool, which seems to be a successful model, being done by people commuting from the underground, Liverpool Lime Street or wherever—where there are no buses?
Councillor Barrington: It is definitely people who are doing shorter journeys around the city centre, but we are seeing people commuting from A to B as well.
Q72 Karl McCartney: Turning to Coventry, how many students are at Warwick University?
Matthew Pencharz: In the Coventry scheme, which closed in January, as the Chair said, we were just operating on the University of Warwick campus.
Q73 Karl McCartney: How many students live on campus?
Matthew Pencharz: I would have to get back to you on that.
Q74 Karl McCartney: We will try to find out. I just want to compare why that failed. I think we can see why. You said it is about scale, so it is about what scale you need. Is it that small cities are not going to be able to have an ongoing concern and it is only big cities? That is what I am trying to get to.
Matthew Pencharz: In order to get the real policy benefits for micro-mobility or e-scooters, you need to operate in a large enough area where you really are transferring people away from single-occupancy cars. The Liverpool scheme, and all of our schemes now, operate in pretty large areas so that you have the ability to deploy enough vehicles and have enough mandatory parking spots. You need to make sure they are dense enough as well, so that people do not have to walk too far to get to one. It is quite important that the area you cover is large enough, so that you have enough of a mixture of the residential and commercial.
Q75 Karl McCartney: It is the scale as well.
Matthew Pencharz: Yes.
Q76 Karl McCartney: I have one last question before I finish, Chair. Going back to Daniel, you mentioned 2,200. Roughly, how many privately owned scooters do you think there are in Liverpool?
Councillor Barrington: I couldn’t really put a number on that.
Q77 Karl McCartney: Have a guess. Be a politician for once. Are there more or less than those available for hire?
Councillor Barrington: Maybe around the same. We are seeing more of them.
Karl McCartney: Maybe we need to get the guy from Halfords back in and ask how many they have sold locally. Thank you very much.
Q78 Paul Howell: Matthew, you talked about the fact that you were seeing a transition from cars to bikes, but you, Brian, were talking about a transition from public transport to bikes. You were saying that there was a carbon saving by going from public transport to bikes. I would like to explore a bit further how much of that is data-driven, and whether you are collecting data or it is a perception, and whether it is all cars or public transport, and ditto for yourself, Brian. I will come to Matthew first.
Matthew Pencharz: In our user surveys, users say that around a third of their journeys would otherwise have been taken in a car. That varies from scheme to scheme. In Northamptonshire, it hits 40% where the user says they would otherwise have used a private car. It varies slightly from market to market. We do big surveys twice a year. We are just going to do our winter one. We will do one in the summer, in July.
There is inevitably some cannibalisation, I suppose, of other sustainable modes such as walking, cycling or public transport. The point I and the industry make is that you cannot let the best drive out the good. If Voi’s figures are around a third of people who would otherwise have taken the car, that is a lot of car journeys. For Voi alone, we have displaced 8 million car journeys with our service.
Q79 Paul Howell: To be clear, I endorse the fact that if you are talking about carbon footprint reduction it has to be more about cars than anything else. I am trying to get a sense of whether you were just picking that because it is the carbon footprint reduction, and therefore cars were more important as to where you were. The Chair has told me to keep it tight.
Matthew Pencharz: I am not sure I understand the question.
Q80 Paul Howell: I think you have actually answered it.
Matthew Pencharz: I think 8% of our users would not have made the journey at all.
Q81 Paul Howell: Eight per cent.
Matthew Pencharz: I should check that.
Q82 Chair: You can write to us with the detail.
Matthew Pencharz: I believe it is 8% who would not have done the journey. We did an economic analysis report of the impact on our high streets, and it is quite noticeable. For what is a fairly small policy intervention by Government, especially if it is made permanent, it has quite a profound effect on reactivating moribund high streets.
Q83 Paul Howell: Very quickly, Brian, if you can.
Brian Matthews: Perhaps I need to correct myself. If I said public transport, I actually meant the private car. It is a shift from the car, and that has been backed up by research from UCL and user surveys. The reason for the switch is that the scooter has been cited as a quicker alternative by 67%; 55% say it is better than cycling or walking for the user; 45% say it is to reduce their private transport cost; and 44% say it is about carbon footprint reduction. Those are the reasons they have switched to the scooter. Taxis are also included in the car switch.
Q84 Ruth Cadbury: I should declare an interest before I ask this question. I chair the women in transport APPG, and Voi sponsored a report we did on gender disparity in the use of e-scooter rental schemes.
Who is not using e-scooters, partly because of the lack of legality of private scooters or for other reasons on the rental schemes? I am thinking about both gender and people with certain disabilities who might find them useful for private use. I will go to Matthew first.
Matthew Pencharz: As you said, Voi worked with the women in transport APPG to do a report on gender disparity. It is quite profound; it is similar-ish to pushbike cycling, where, again, there is quite wide gender disparity. We got some learnings from that report. Some of it was fairly straightforward engineering, to do with the positioning of, for example, the indicators. For the most recent model—the V5—we have put them closer for people with smaller hands.
Some of the things are to do with parking and ensuring that your parking spaces are properly lit. Some women will be understandably not happy about fiddling with their phone to unlock the scooter in poorly lit areas. That is another one. We think that through when we think about our parking.
Another pretty major blocker is to do with perceptions of safety. That is probably very similar to cycling. That is where, working with our councils, putting in new sustainable cycling and transport infrastructure is very important to increase safety and to try to segregate things. Work has gone on in Liverpool, along the Strand, where it all has cycle paths now, and round near Lime Street. That kind of intervention from local councils can help, hopefully, to rebalance the gender divide.
You asked about age. I said earlier that the age is increasing over time. Our bell curve is moving to the right, I suppose. The core age is now 25 to 35, so it is increasing over time. We have some older users.
When it comes to disabilities, this is a question we need to put in the next survey, although there is certainly more than anecdotal evidence that some people with disabilities who cannot go on a bike for one reason or another can go on an electric scooter. Clearly, it is not for all people with disabilities—that is obvious—but certainly for some disabilities where cycling in particular is perhaps a challenge, e-scooters and micro-mobility can be very helpful.
Q85 Ruth Cadbury: Do you have anything to add, Councillor Barrington? If things were different in some way, who would use e-scooters more?
Councillor Barrington: Safety is a concern. It is not just for e-scooters; it is for cycling as well. We know we need better infrastructure in place—the high-quality segregated cycle lanes, some of which we have done around Lime Street and the Strand. We have plans for more, but Liverpool is still a very car-dominant city. We need to do more to encourage people to make the shift.
Brian Matthews: I do not think there is much more to add to what has been said. I have just one point around the age of 18, which is the cut-off limit that the operators in Milton Keynes apply—you have to be 18 to use the scheme in Milton Keynes. Technically, it is 16 if you have a provisional licence. There may be scope to explore the use for 16 to 18-year-olds, because they are starting on their life journey learning about transport and mobility. Having that choice early in life might be productive for the long-term mobility of the UK. We will think about that, but clearly there are issues about having appropriate safety, training and support for younger people using scooters.
Q86 Mr Bradshaw: What is the logic of requiring a driving licence for an e-scooter when you do not need one to ride a bike?
Brian Matthews: The logic the legislation used—perhaps this needs to be checked through—is that they are motor vehicles, and to use a motor vehicle you need a driving licence.
Q87 Mr Bradshaw: Even if they are legalised and regulated, will you still need a driving licence to use one?
Brian Matthews: That is a decision that needs to be made.
Q88 Mr Bradshaw: Is that what happens in other countries that have legalised and regulated?
Matthew Pencharz: It is a decision for the Government. We would like to believe it is a question of when and not if—of when, sooner rather than later, they come to legalise e-scooters. It is an important point. The law under which these trials fall—remember they are temporary trials, so secondary legislation—is that they are motor vehicles.
Q89 Mr Bradshaw: It would certainly act as a deterrent to me. I would sooner use an e-rental bike because I don’t have to faff around with my driving licence.
Matthew Pencharz: It is definitely a blocker. It raises a bigger point about e-scooters when they are legalised, which is not to consider them as motor vehicles. We are very pleased that the Government have talked about this third—
Q90 Mr Bradshaw: When, rather than if, it happens, hopefully, you would all prefer that they were treated like bikes rather than vehicles in terms of a requirement for a driving licence to use them, would you?
Councillor Barrington: I agree. I have never used an e-scooter, because I do not have a driving licence or a provisional driving licence. That certainly is a barrier for people. It should be seen as in a similar category to e-bikes.
Mr Bradshaw: Mr Matthews?
Brian Matthews: A counter thing to consider around this is that if you are issued with a driving licence, you have passed a certain level of competency to operate a vehicle. You may lose that as a check on users—that to get a driving licence you have to have appropriate sight and so on.
Matthew Pencharz: At the danger of interrupting this constant hymn—we are all agreeing with each other—having a provisional licence is actually no proof at all of road sense. All you need to do is pay your £34, or whatever it is, and get it in the post at the age of 16. It is a blocker. In our view, it encourages people to take a step towards car ownership, which is surely what we are trying to delay.
Q91 Mr Bradshaw: Yes. Absolutely. In most other countries that have legalised e-scooters, people are not required to have a driving licence. What is your assessment of the impact on the rental schemes if and when private e-scooters are legalised? What has happened in other countries? Presumably, lots of people who currently use the rental schemes will buy a private e-scooter and not use a rental scheme again because they will have their own e-scooter at home.
Matthew Pencharz: The industry may see a small reduction—it would be quite small—but then the whole market would widen. It would become much more normalised. The rental schemes—a bit like the Santander scheme here in London or the cycle hire scheme in the west midlands—are used for different journeys. There will be people who have their own bike at home and people who don’t have their own bike at home. People will have their own scooter at home and people won’t have their own scooter at home. If they are in the city and they want to go from A to B, they will co-ordinate their multimodal journey using different modes.
Q92 Mr Bradshaw: I want to ask about your pricing. Is the pricing the same in all the schemes or does it vary?
Matthew Pencharz: It varies slightly, market by market.
Q93 Mr Bradshaw: I notice that where I live Dott is significantly cheaper than Lime, and both are much more expensive than the scheme in Exeter, which is council-run. What do you expect to happen to pricing in the rental schemes if and when they are legalised? I would not go a long distance on one of your scooters or one of the bikes because it is blooming expensive. I would take my own bike. I use them for convenience; for short journeys, when I am in a hurry, when I know I can go from A to B very quickly or when the bus is delayed or full. It is a spontaneous decision. What is the business model, going forward?
Matthew Pencharz: We set the pricing largely in partnership with our councils as part of the concession agreements that we have.
Q94 Mr Bradshaw: Do you make a profit?
Matthew Pencharz: That opens a whole wider conversation to do with the profitability of the industry, if the Committee will give me 30 seconds on it. It goes to the question that the Chair asked at the beginning about the scheme at the University of Warwick.
In the UK we believe that, at scale, this business model can work. However, we are a transport operator so our margins—looking at bus operators, for example—are very narrow. Everybody is clearly aware of the background economic conditions at the moment. Raising capital for companies like Voi and our competitors is very challenging. We have all had to make some pretty difficult decisions, including reduction of headcount and reduction of cost base in the last few months, which means that we can deliver e-scooters and micro-mobility without subsidy, unlike almost any other form of sustainable transport, and at pace. It is also very flexible—to the point that Councillor Barrington and I were making about parking and all that kind of thing. However, there is a danger that, if authorities choose to put on onerous city charges, in particular, that wipes out the margin and we are no longer profitable or potentially profitable.
The short answer is yes, the business model is proven, but we need to speak to our city councils. Some of them are considering revenue shares, profit shares or large charges. That would mean they would potentially get a large slice of nothing as opposed to a much smaller slice of something.
Q95 Mr Bradshaw: Do all the schemes currently operate—and do you envisage they would continue to operate when legalised—with an unlocking fee and a pay-by-the-minute fee? Would you also look at packages that you could buy that would make it significantly cheaper, like the e-bike rental scheme in my constituency? That is much cheaper than any of the e-scooter schemes that we are talking about, because you can get a package.
Councillor Barrington: We already have a monthly pass in place that people can purchase, and we have discount schemes.
Q96 Mr Bradshaw: How much is that?
Councillor Barrington: Is it £40?
Matthew Pencharz: I would have to—
Q97 Mr Bradshaw: You would have to use it quite a lot to make it worth while. You cannot just buy a 20-quid bundle, for example. Is that something you would look at?
Matthew Pencharz: The products we tend to have are the monthly pass that Councillor Barrington referred to and pay as you go. It is worth saying that we have a Voi 4 All concession, which is particularly aimed at lower-income groups. I think apprentices are on it and people in receipt of a bus pass for older users. It is also for people on particular benefits. The Voi 4 All concession is to try to address the cost of living crisis, in particular. Our service, and I assume competitor services, can help poorer people who do not have access to a car, or where public transport is poor and expensive, or both. They can then roam around their city further to places of employment.
In some of the schemes we expanded into—Bristol is an example—we did it deliberately because there were particular housing estates with a lower-income population. It would help them to go to places of employment.
Q98 Mr Bradshaw: Why do you get fined if you drive through a no-ride zone or between two ride zones? I do not quite understand that. I was fined seven quid the other week because I was going through a wedge of the borough that came down into Westminster, and I did not even realise that I was going out of zone.
Matthew Pencharz: Was it an e-bike or—
Mr Bradshaw: Yes.
Matthew Pencharz: Well, it is not Voi. We do not operate in London, so I cannot comment about what happened.
Q99 Mr Bradshaw: Do you have the same problems?
Councillor Barrington: We have areas where you just cannot operate the scooters themselves.
Q100 Mr Bradshaw: It is dangerous because you just stop in the middle of the road and it will not go any further.
Matthew Pencharz: It slows down slowly. It does not just stop. It slows down slowly.
Mr Bradshaw: My bike stopped in the middle of a very busy road, and it was too heavy to lift off. I got fined seven quid for bothering. Anyway, thank you very much and good luck.
Q101 Jack Brereton: First, I want to look a bit more at the lessons learned. The national evaluation, particularly the data used in that, is up to 2021. Have the findings continued along a similar trajectory over the last year or so? I will go to Mr Matthews, first.
Brian Matthews: I am sorry; I did not quite catch the question.
Q102 Jack Brereton: Have the findings from the national evaluation continued since then? That data dates to 2021. Over the last year or so, have we seen similar sorts of findings?
Brian Matthews: Yes. As a colleague said, the schemes have matured and some of those findings have been validated, in my view, especially when you validate them against the timings when they were taken. They were taken in pandemic time and coming out of that. There has been some stabilisation, but the general thrust of those findings has been borne out.
Matthew Pencharz: I largely agree with Brian. I think I referred to one statistic—the Voi one from our own user surveys—which is the numbers of people who are commuting. We have seen the age increasing over that time as well. I think that report has 36% for commuting, and ours says 53%.
In the last 18 months, Voi has seen a huge reduction in accidents. The number of accidents per million kilometres has really reduced. Again, this is part of the maturing of the service. Drivers have become more used to seeing e-scooters. Similarly, the e-scooter riders themselves are clearly becoming more experienced and are going from A to B, outside the pandemic, to work, study, go to shops and socialise.
Jack Brereton: Councillor Barrington, is there anything you want to say?
Councillor Barrington: We have seen a similar improvement, particularly as people have got used to it and with the introduction of the designated parking bays. Rider behaviour has improved as well.
Q103 Jack Brereton: The designated parking bays are one thing that you changed along the way. Are there any other things that you would have done differently or changed, if you had been able to start again?
Councillor Barrington: I was not in cabinet when we introduced it. I think initially I would not have extended outside the city centre as quickly as we did. I do not think that people were used to the scooters enough at that point, because it was still during the pandemic. That was one thing I probably would not have done as quickly, but now that we have put those things in place, we have seen improvements and we are happier with the scheme.
Q104 Jack Brereton: Do either of the other two witnesses have anything that you think should have been done differently?
Brian Matthews: I do not think so. The way we have approached the trial is to be adaptive and responsive.
Q105 Jack Brereton: But you were able to change things along the way.
Brian Matthews: We were able to change. We set up agreements with all of our operators based on a memorandum of understanding rather than a very strict contract. Very clearly within that was the ability to have dialogue and discuss and enforce changes with a few days’ notice, and they were required to do that.
Q106 Jack Brereton: What sort of specific things did you change?
Brian Matthews: It was around the parking. We went with a free flow, which we think is still very beneficial for Milton Keynes because of its low density and the anywhere-to-anywhere demand travel patterns. This supports that. Clearly, areas would benefit from more regimented parking, so we introduced those.
Adaptions for the anywhere parking ensure that all the operators require their riders to take a photograph of where they parked the vehicle, and that is checked. If that user is then seen to be inappropriately parking, there is a warning given. If it happens again, there is a suspension, and on the third time, you are banned.
We are using the technology and learnings to try to address behaviours. There are benefits to having free flow, because it supports the travel demand patterns in Milton Keynes. If we went to a wholly docking situation, we might lose some of those benefits and it would not be as attractive a scheme for commuters and the people who use it. We recognised that we had to take other measures.
Similarly, with the speeding issue, we worked with communities to identify the areas where we wanted to reduce speed because there were conflicts. Mr Wood explained that very clearly. We wanted to work with that community to identify these things—“There is an issue here, so we have to sort out the parking and have dedicated parking; we have to have the no-go or slowdown areas.”
In response to your question, we do find people who have stopped working in an area. We identified a community with a high proportion of disabled people living in that area, so we wanted the scooters not to be in that area. Users quickly learned that they should not use them there. We offered diversions around those areas.
Q107 Jack Brereton: Has there been any sharing of learning between the different trial areas across the country?
Brian Matthews: Yes, absolutely. The Department for Transport operates a forum for all the trial areas, for both cities and operators to share experiences in different groups and then come together. They have been very regular. They have just been restarted from the Department for Transport, so, yes, we are all learning across and trying to apply good practice across the trial areas.
Q108 Jack Brereton: There is particular focus in the specification of this through the Department that local authorities will make sure that it is done in an environmentally sustainable way and will not harm the environment. Do you think that has been achieved, Matthew?
Matthew Pencharz: What Daniel and Brian have said shows you the partnership between all operators. We do not operate in Milton Keynes, where there are three operators. Voi Liverpool is a very flexible system, and you can change it quite quickly. You can change the no-ride zones, where you can and cannot ride at all and where it slows you down safely, unlike Ben Bradshaw’s experience on his bike. We work very closely with those learnings.
When it comes to sustainability, Voi has been certified net zero for just over three years. We have—
Q109 Jack Brereton: Was there a requirement that you identified as net zero? Are there operators who are part of the trial who are not?
Matthew Pencharz: I don’t know. Obviously, I should not comment on what the competitor situations are when it comes to whether or not they are net zero. What I would say is that all of us are very much about sustainability. Safety is first, but it is also about having a sustainable, convenient and affordable service for the residents in cities where we operate.
At Voi, we were certainly the first to have lifetime carbon cycle analysis of a preceding scooter, and we reduced the lifetime carbon of that by 85%. The current V5 model, which is the one we use in Liverpool and in the west of England, has lots of recycled parts. It is a circular economy, with second life applications for the batteries, and so on, in order to reduce the environmental impact. The vans are e-vans and use sustainable power for the facilities. We measure our carbon emissions, and we want to be climate-positive by the end of this decade.
Q110 Jack Brereton: You were talking a minute ago about where the modal shift is coming from. There are some concerns that a lot of these people would ordinarily be walking. The national evaluation that has been done suggests that most of those are using e-scooters for short hops of around 2 km, and that most of them would have likely previously walked those routes. Is it a concern that a large proportion would potentially have been walking, meaning this is a move to a less sustainable means of transport?
Matthew Pencharz: It goes back to my previous answer around not letting the best drive out the good. Micro-mobility e-scooters are another option. If we want to entice people out of motorcars for climate reasons, air pollution reasons, for decongestion and for quality of life—
Q111 Jack Brereton: We are trying to understand whether that is actually happening. You and Mr Matthews pointed to some data suggesting that it may be happening, but some of the information from the national evaluation actually suggests that most people would have walked those routes. What is the case?
Matthew Pencharz: We do the surveys, and our users tell us that, in fact, they would otherwise have taken over a third of the journeys in a car or taxi. Of our 21 million rides, we have displaced about 8 million car journeys to a more sustainable form of transport.
It is about giving people choice and options. I think I said that 8% were not going to do the journey at all, but I will write to the Committee to confirm that, Chair. That is probably economically and socially useful. They have got out. We have worked with the University of Leeds on a mental health report, to be published shortly, about the positive benefits of getting out. People have to walk to the mandatory parking zones. They have to unlock the scooter and go off, park it in another mandatory parking zone, and then get off it again. All of that is a lot better than getting out of your house or flat, getting into a car and driving to where you were going. I think that is the balance that the Government and the councils need to make.
Q112 Jack Brereton: Councillor Barrington, is there anything you want to add on the environmental side of things?
Councillor Barrington: A similar thing. The surveys have found that about 33% of the journeys would have been taken by car. People who would have walked are definitely using e-scooters, but I think we have to focus on having a range of options that people can use to get them out of cars. Walking, cycling, e-scooters and better public transport—we need to offer that whole package to people.
Q113 Mike Amesbury: I am Mike Amesbury representing Weaver Vale. Good morning. I want to focus on the law in terms of the trial. I want to focus on private use as well. What have been the challenges, starting with you, Daniel?
Councillor Barrington: The challenge with private use is definitely that the e-scooters are not as good as the hire scooters. They do not have the checks and balances in place. Some of them look very flimsy. The speed checks are not there. There is a speed limit on our Voi 1’s of 12.5 mph, but we know that is not the case with the private ones. We are keen to see that legislation does not just cover the trials but the private scooters as well.
Matthew Pencharz: We have worked very closely with the police forces in all of our areas. Merseyside Police cover Councillor Barrington’s area. There was probably some scepticism among some police colleagues when this form of transport arrived in the middle of the pandemic. I think they have probably been relieved but not surprised by the shared schemes, because they are regulated and tracked.
On the speeds, people cannot hack into them and go super quickly. We operate at 12.5 mph generally in our areas, except when the city asks us to go slower, perhaps in a shared walking/cycling/pedestrianised precinct.
When issues have occurred, we have always helped out the police. Inevitably, because it is a form of transport, there have been a very small number of incidents. When it comes to the impact on the police, I think our service has been pretty minimal. As you heard from Commander Gordon, they understandably focus on the private e-scooters rather than ours.
Q114 Mike Amesbury: Is there a positive, constructive working relationship with the police?
Matthew Pencharz: Yes, very much so.
Q115 Mike Amesbury: You are probably frustrated about the lack of regulation at the moment.
Matthew Pencharz: Yes.
Q116 Mike Amesbury: In terms of illegal use during the trial, give me a flavour of that, Brian. What sort of antisocial behaviour and sometimes criminality has occurred in the trial?
Brian Matthews: I think I alluded to it earlier. The biggest thing in antisocial behaviour is the inappropriate leaving of scooters, blocking pavements and footways. When we have investigated that and talked to users about it, some of it is just inconsiderate. People do not think about the consequences. There is an education piece around that, which is why we introduced the photograph element to manage that. We have also heard anecdotally from users, “Well, I left it there so the next person can see it and use it.” They are trying to be a good citizen without realising the impact of that. It is an education thing around that.
The speed reductions that we introduced did not have a kickback from users, so I do not think that speeding, which was pointed out as a problem for other users, has had a negative reaction from the actual scooter users as antisocial behaviour.
So it is about the parking and—I think this is something that Commander Gordon alluded to—the use of scooters on pavements that are not cycleways, given that scooters are only allowed on designated cycle routes. There isn’t a distinction for the public between a cycle route and a pavement. Again, it is about antisocial behaviour in using inappropriate areas. Technology cannot come to our rescue at the moment on that because geofencing is not accurate enough to geofence those areas. You could get the problem of putting the scooters on to high-speed roads if you take the pavements out of the area. So it is around education on some of the antisocial behaviour, which is about inappropriate parking.
Q117 Mike Amesbury: Daniel, you spoke about behaviour change in response to another question. A number of incidents were investigated in the Liverpool area with regard to antisocial behaviour, particularly pavement parking. How did you move that forward? How did you nudge behaviour change?
Councillor Barrington: It was very much the change we introduced with designated parking bays and, as mentioned for other schemes, people having to take a photograph of where they parked the e-scooter to show it was parked in the right space. We introduced a three-strikes policy with people as well. They would get a warning, followed up by a ban if they were not parking in the right place or were caught riding on pavements. Riding on pavements was a big one.
I think it was about the educational side of it. It was such a new thing. Some drivers thought they should be on pavements and not on the roads. We have definitely seen a better shift in that. We still get people riding on pavements, but we see people parking on pavements as well. There is a responsibility with all modes of transport, but there has been a lot more done on the educational side of things to raise awareness.
Mike Amesbury: It is better education and regulation. Thank you.
Q118 Jack Brereton: I want to touch a bit more on safety, particularly the use of helmets. I do not think your council schemes include the rental of helmets. Is this something of concern?
Councillor Barrington: I think helmets should be a requirement. It is recommended to people that they use them, but at the moment it is not an official requirement. I think, going forward, it should be.
Brian Matthews: I agree with that, yes. It is a sensible course of action. Working with the operators, I do not think they are resistant to that. The promotion in a lot of the schemes, as Voi will confirm, includes giving away a free helmet to the user. It is recognised that that would be an improvement that would clearly uplift safety and the credibility of the schemes operating in cities.
Matthew Pencharz: As Brian and Dan have both said, Voi have given away a lot of helmets. If you are a monthly pass user for one of our pricier products, you get sent a helmet. We have done lots of safety events where helmets are given out. I think we have given away tens of thousands across the schemes in England. We promote very heavily in the app. You get rewarded if you take a selfie with your helmet on.
However, I will, I am afraid, disagree with my two colleagues about making it mandatory. The first thing is that I think there will be rider pushback. We ask them this in our polling, and they do not want a shared helmet. The problem would therefore be, if the idea is that it is supposed to be flexible and straightforward, that it is a blocker for users if it is compulsory to wear a helmet. That is where the balance is between promoting, encouraging, giving away helmets and rewarding people for wearing helmets in order to increase helmet wearing. By making it mandatory, as has happened in Denmark, you will see a massive reduction in rides and you will lose lots of the policy benefits that I referred to around enticing people out of motorcars. It has to be convenient as well as, most importantly, safe, sustainable and affordable.
Q119 Jack Brereton: We talked a minute ago about whether we need driving licences and things like that. Do you think there should be some sort of proficiency test or course that people go on before they ride an e-scooter?
Matthew Pencharz: I think e-scooters should be considered, in large part, as very similar to e-bikes. They have the same power, as long as they are speed-controlled, which ours, I repeat, are. The e-bike hire schemes are as well. They are the same weight and essentially they have very similar handling. I know that the Government are very keen on pushing forward cycle proficiency courses for schoolchildren in particular, and it seems to me that that education would be very helpful.
It is also important to say that all the operators do a safety test when you first sign up. You get constant, repeated push notifications about safety—wear a helmet—and safety messages about not going on pavements, twin riding or drinking and those kinds of things.
There is lots of push education that the operators do. Clearly, there is also a wider role for Government around encouraging people out of cars, so that when they start their life journey as they turn 16, 17 and 18, it is not to get into a car but to go on a bike, an e-scooter, an e-bike or a more sustainable alternative.
Q120 Mr Bradshaw: On helmets, I would ask Brian and Daniel to look at the evidence that Matthew referred to about the impact of making helmet use mandatory. It has been devastating on cycling in countries where it has been mandated. The overall health benefits are then lost. In your terms, the overall modal shift benefits would be lost if helmets were mandatory for e-scooters. Usage went down, particularly because these things are a convenience and you often use them on a spontaneous rather than a planned basis. You are not going to have your helmet on you, and you are not going to use an e-scooter if you do not have your helmet, if it is mandatory. That is why successive Governments have not mandated helmet use for cyclists.
Matthew Pencharz: One addition to that is that evidence coming out of Liverpool, where we work with the city hospital, is that e-scooter and pushbike accident levels are broadly equivalent as things normalise. That is what has happened in Liverpool. Why would you have different regulation for e-scooters as opposed to bicycles?
Chair: I am slightly conscious of the clock. I would like to conclude by quarter to 12, so it would be helpful if we could have brief questions and answers for the last few minutes.
Q121 Jack Brereton: The only other question I want to ask is to the local authorities. It is around the design of streets, street clutter and those sorts of issues. You have obviously heard about the impact on people who are partially sighted and blind. Do you think there is more that can be done to try to increase accessibility for people who have a disability, or people who are partially sighted?
Councillor Barrington: There is definitely more work to be done. As I said, in Liverpool we are looking at on-street parking now because we know that street clutter is a big issue that we need to tackle, alongside other things. We have had income from the Voi rental scheme which we have used for active travel schemes. More recently, we have installed lots of dropped kerbs to increase accessibility for people.
A big barrier is the lack of investment in local government. Liverpool has had over 65% of its funding cut since 2010. That is half a billion pounds less each year that we have to spend. We have not been able to put the investment that we need into our roads. That is a barrier for people using e-scooters, because there are potholes. We have also not been able to make all our pavements accessible with dropped kerbs for everybody or to put in all the cycling infrastructure that we need. Local government very much needs more investment.
Brian Matthews: Contrary to your point, I think there could be better information put out on the street, reducing street clutter. As far as I am aware, there is limited signage available to support the trials. You are relying on cycling signage. We need specific information pointing to where a no-ride zone or a scooter-operating zone is coming into effect, so that you can give that information to users. We need traffic management measures, so that you can segregate parts of the network and run scooters to the left or right and cycles and pedestrians to the other side. There are lots of elements of the scheme that could be improved if they moved to permanency.
The reason why they are not happening now is the frustration. We have talked about not knowing where this may be going or what the regulation will say. The investment from local authorities and the operators to implement those measures to make the environment safer for all users is not there at the moment.
Q122 Jack Brereton: Have you done any sort of equality assessment to look at what could be done to make them more accessible and friendlier for people who have a disability or who are partially sighted or blind?
Brian Matthews: We work with our community. It is about communicating. I have talked many times in groups about understanding this so that we can start learning how to design the operation of these schemes on a permanent basis and make the long-term investment to make the environment safer and better for all. It is just not happening at the moment because of the uncertainty about how and when the trials will move to being permanent schemes.
We are talking to operators that we might want to consider for very long-term contracts, so that you get a level of certainty and investment in the network. That improves it for all and you do not get the problems of lack of investment from a Government Department. You can work with the private sector to create the environments to make these schemes safe and sustainable.
Q123 Paul Howell: I have one final throwaway. The trials have been going for some time. You have taken a lot of information from the trials specifically. As we have heard in a lot of discussions, in parallel with the trials there is the whole private purchase agenda that is going on. Have you been able to take learnings from what you have seen and what people have been doing with private purchases to inform the outcomes in terms of where the real world is going to be, should things happen? Have you just been looking at the information that is coming through the trial very specifically, which is the rental market as opposed to the impact of the private market in your communities?
Brian Matthews: Certainly, the focus from our perspective has been on the trials because we have access to the data and the partnership with the operators. On learnings, it is very difficult to talk to the rider of an illegal scooter, who may not want to be forthcoming.
Q124 Paul Howell: No, but you can see the outcomes in terms of where people are parking or not parking.
Brian Matthews: An example of where we are looking at that is that we are working with our police force, and they have very helpfully allocated a crime analyst to look at where the crimes and impacts are coming from. We see that a lot of them come from private scooters, and are due to the speed of the vehicles and the way they are being operated. We can pick out specific aspects if a private scooter has been involved in an incident or an area.
Q125 Paul Howell: You take cognisance of that.
Brian Matthews: Yes.
Q126 Paul Howell: Thank you, Brian. Anyone else, just to finish us off?
Councillor Barrington: I think that if we see legislation around private e-scooters, we will see more of them, particularly for people who want to use them regularly, every day. They will want to purchase their own. Once the legislation is in place, it will be better for us. There will be the sorts of checks and balances that we are not necessarily seeing now with some of the private e-scooters. These schemes very much still have their place with rentals, in a city that relies heavily on the visitor economy. It is a big thing for us to have visitors, and for people making short journeys around the city as well.
Chair: Thank you all very much for your time and evidence today. It has been very helpful for our inquiry. If you are able to share any of the datasets that you have, it would be much appreciated. For now, thank you again for your time.